Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, the example that they have given, as I heard it, refers to a single employer making an application with respect to the single interest stream. A single employer can't make an application to the single interest stream. It starts with multiple employers. That's the way it works. But if the question is wanting to go to the broader point of are these rules meant to be able to reach agriculture? Yes, absolutely. Those opposite presided over a time when horticulture workers were being paid $4 an hour. Those opposite presided over a time when some of the worst examples of wage theft were coming from that exact sector, not because of the farmers themselves but because of the labour hire companies that were going through rorting the systems. The farmers thought they were paying for decent wages but they were being charged for them. There was a rort happening that was never meeting the worker.

I met with workers. I remember meeting Kate on a visa here from Taiwan who was fishing out of the bins beside the supermarkets to get food—she had a full-time job—because that's what was happening under the laws of those opposite. When the Prime Minister gave the example before that this act that has been proposed by the government, the amendments to the Fair Work Act, will make it that you can no longer advertise work for less than the legal minimum rate of pay, you bet we're in favour of that. And you bet that will get away some of the rorts that've been happening. You should be representing all the people in your electorate, including the workers who've been underpaid.

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